IntroductionFeudal Epic is the sequel to the widely popular Feudal War map, with an important difference: with 8 Kingdoms, 8 Castles (one per Kingdom) and 4 villages to be pillaged for bonus troops, Feudal Epic can be played with 8 players. It contains 128 regions, making it one of the largest maps on Conquer Club. Each of the 4 Villages gives you +3 bonus troops which are automatically deployed on the Village itself as soon as you start your turn. Each Castle gives you +5 bonus troops which are also automatically deployed on the Castle at the start of your turn. Each Kingdom has 8 Regions and gives 1 bonus troop per 2 Kingdom Regions held (and like Feudal War, each Castle counts as a Kingdom region).

This map works for many settings. In general, strategies that work for Feudal War will work for Feudal Epic with some minor tweaking.

Size: Very Large Conquest mapBonuses: BalancedComplexity: Complex, especially with fog of war on.

FeaturesAutodeploy (Player controlled Castles autodeploy +5, Player controlled Villages autodeploy +3)Bombardments (Castles may bombard any non-adjacent region in their kingdom; villages may not bombard)Conquest Gameplay (Players begin with their home castles and must expand from there, as the rest of the board is neutral)Naming Challenges (Regions are named and numbered).Starting Position (There are 8 castles, in two, three, and four player games each player starts by controlling two castles each, in all other games each player starts with one castle)Victory Condition (Control of all 8 castles at the beginning of your round results in an automatic victory)

How to play Feudal EpicGenerally speaking, this guide is written with Fog of War in mind because most games on Feudal Epic use that setting. I have some notes below on playing without Fog of War.

Each player will begin with two random castles, while the remaining two castles will begin neutral (with 3 troops on them). Your goal will be to build a primary stack which will be your assaulting force to hopefully devastate your opponent. The most important factors in play will be what type of spoils are used, and the type of reinforcements. For no spoils games, your first goal will be to seize the five regions with 2 neutral troops on them in each of the kingdoms. This will ensure you receive a +3 troop bonus for holding six kingdom lands. If you are playing with spoils, either escalating or flat rate, you must leave one nonadjacent region to a castle neutral, so that you can bombard each round to take a spoil. It follows that if you leave one region neutral, you shouldn't bother taking more than five of the neutral regions in one of the kingdoms.

Your next step will be to either spread out and take a village bonus, or to stay within your kingdom and continue to build. If you can determine (based on spoils cashing and reinforcing patterns) where your opponent is, it may make your decision easier. Remember that if you go through your stack of 10 neutral troops on the border, your opponent won't have to! The size of your main stack is critically important to determining when you strike. Because the assaulter has an edge when the size of the stacks is large (e.g. over 100), it generally behooves you to be the assaulter. Although, if you assault too soon, you have opened a pathway back to your castle that is unguarded by neutral regions.

I would recommend playing some games with no fog of war (sunny) to get a feel for strategy, then adding fog of war when you are comfortable.

Feudal Epic works well for multiplayer games, but does run the risk of stalemate, especially when down to 3 players. Reading the game log is absolutely critical to success in games with fog of war! When playing with escalating spoils, it is critical to keep a neutral region in a spot where your stack will not take away your ability to take a spoil. For example, if you are on Great Kingdom castle, you have two basic options on where to stack. Either on the castle, after conquering GK1, 3, 5, and 4; or on Great Kingdom 5 or 6 after conquering GK1, 2, and 3. Either way will work, but my preference is to reinforce the troops each round so I would pick the second. This goes back to not giving a "tell" on where you are.

3 playerThe basic strategy for a 3 player game is similar to two player, with the proviso that other than Rhu village, I would not recommend striking out for a village because it will weaken your kingdom's defenses too much. Lastly, for 3 player, if you cannot eliminate an opponent, be wary of taking just one of his castles as it will leave him vulnerable to the third player taking him out (and gaining his spoils if it is an escalating spoils game). Generally one castle will have the stack on it while the second castle is more weakly defended. Try to capture the second castle if you think you can avoid having your opponent retake it or the castle you attacked from. Because this is so tricky to time, 3 player often results in a stalemate, especially when Fog of War is not on.

4 to 8 playerThese games play very differently from 2 and 3 player. Generally speaking, the first player to make a move is not the likeliest to win because he will weaken himself so much in taking out the first opponent. Obviously this generalization doesn't always hold true (or else no one would assault first) but I prefer to strike after the first player has made his move. If played with escalating spoils, the best time to assault another player is when he holds 4 or 5 cards, to try to get a double cash of spoils mid-turn. If played with flat rate or no spoils, the strategy is to eliminate another player while preserving enough of your strength to discourage an immediate assault by the remaining opponents. Again, generally speaking, assaulting before round 8 or 9 will not have good results.

Terminator games are somewhat similar to standard, with a couple of twists. Early on, you can make a conscious decision that because of troop count, positioning, or poor luck with assaults that you will focus on getting a kill or two instead of trying for a sweep. Terminator is therefore slightly more flexible in terms of potential strategies, when compared to standard. Whereas in standard gameplay there are two basic strategies, waiting for opponents to attack and fall short or trying to perform the sweep by eliminating an opponent for spoils and continuing the assault, in terminator you can play for position and hope to pick off weaker players for points and/or for spoils.

The key to assassin games is to take out your opponent in one assault. If it fails, you will not usually get a second chance because you will be weakened enough for someone else to assassinate you. If you play with no fog of war, you can calculate with a great deal of precision your odds of successfully taking out an opponent, meaning the decision is strictly mathematical. If playing with fog, the decision becomes more intuitive, although spoils can sometimes give you an indication of who is where. Again, assaulting before round 8 is generally too soon but exceptions include when your target takes out one of his neutral 10's or when another player has launched his assault and is close to assassinating his target. The Assault Odds Script is an invaluable tool for determining when the time is appropriate to assault.

Doubles is a popular format for Feudal Epic. When played with fog, it combines the guesswork of two player with the bonus of not knowing on whom the other team is stacking. The key to winning doubles games is to try and eliminate your opponent's stack before they eliminate yours. Therefore, the weaker player generally does nothing but deploy to the stack, and take a spoil if playing with spoils. Reading the game log is crucial to determine where your opponents are! Usually an assault can be launched by Round 8, but again, the longer it can be delayed the better the odds it will succeed.

Triples is an interesting setting that allows for strategic deployment and some guesswork. Because two castles are vacant, you have a fairly decent (60%) chance of guessing an opponent's location purely from guesswork. Usually you can enhance that guess using spoils, reinforcement patterns, and assault patterns, as well as observing opponents' tendencies. Generally speaking, by round 9 or 10 the first assault should be launched. Striking first usually will yield a victory if you can destroy your opponents' stack. One player will be the stack while the two others will try to support the first. Again, if two players are in nearby castles (for example, Rebel Territory and Warlords, or Imperial Dynasty and Barbarian) linking up can be a good strategy to use, but less so for escalating spoils.

Quadruples is a setting that allows for strategic deployment but removes much of the mystery of the map. Because every castle is occupied, and four of them are known to your team, the only question is which opponent is on each of the four remaining castles. As a result, striking first usually will yield a victory if you can destroy your opponents' stack, but if you hit one of the support players, odds are good you will lose. Therefore guessing right is critical if you are planning to be the aggressor. One player will be the stack while the three others will try to support the first. Linking up (see the Feudal War Guide) is generally not recommended for Epic when playing with escalating spoils, whereas in Feudal War it is a solid strategy regardless of spoils.

No spoils removes much of the luck associated with spoils, instead emphasizing strategy and "intensity cube" rolling. The advantage of no spoils is that there are no "tells" on where your troops are, and no need to keep an open region in a kingdom (unless desired in order to have a path out) which in turn means proper play will be rewarded with more troops.

Flat rate spoils plays uniquely for the first ten rounds or so, but then becomes very similar to no spoils. The reason for this is the autodeploy is so high in comparison to spoils that spoils take a secondary role. If you should get a 3 set of mixed spoils early, it may be the one time to violate the rule of trying to wait to rounds 6-8 to assault.

Escalating spoils make for a very interesting game, because sudden shifts can occur in gameplay due to failed assaults. For example, if a player is trying to eliminate another and falls short, you might be able to pick up the cards of both players fairly easily and finish the game. As a general rule of thumb, assaulting before the spoils cash is 30 is a bad idea, but again, the exception is often worth making if someone has weakened themselves sufficiently.

Nuclear spoils can have no effect in some games, and completely finish a game in others. If you should be lucky enough to draw a card with one of your opponent's castles on it, most likely it will result in a victory (and the converse is true too). Nuclear spoils works well with 2 player on this map. The use of nuclear spoils in multiplayer is an interesting one because it allows you to study the game log for clues as to people's location due to a nuke taking their regions out.

A few general notes on reinforcements. If you play with adjacent reinforcements, be very careful about conquering regions. Because so many of your troops are autodeployed on the castle, it is vital that you have either a direct reinforcement path or a stack adjacent to or on the castle. If not, you could have a troop superiority that goes to waste because of poor positioning. Conversely, with unlimited reinforcements be wary of making a move without considering that your opponents may be able to reinforce in strength, and quickly. My preference for Feudal Epic is chained reinforcements, as it allows for strategic movement without completely hamstringing you if a stack is locked in by friendly troops. Great Kingdom and Rebel Territory castles both have tortuous paths for adjacent reinforcements because they are separated from their exit point by 3 regions rather than the two that all other castles have. Be very wary of how you deploy on these two kingdoms.

Compared to most maps on Conquer Club, Feudal Epic emphasizes speed less and strategy more in freestyle games. Key strategies include always trying to go first in 2 player games (to maximize your drop and allow you to reduce your opponent's), and making sure you are not last in a multi-player game (the last person to take a turn cannot take another turn until 12 hours have elapsed in a casual freestyle game unless someone else takes their turn first).

What do I mean when I say "reading the log?" For fog of war games, especially on conquest maps, examining the game log can yield important information about the location of your opponents. First, if you are playing with spoils, a spoil card naming a region held by a player will grant a +2 bonus when it is cashed by that player. Therefore, if you see a +2 has been added to ?, you can try to figure out which of the 3 spoils that were cashed correspond to that region. In doing this use both logic and intuition - for example, if two of the spoils were in Cen, or Xeu, or another central area (non-kingdom), the third spoil surely tells you where that player is.

Second, the pattern in which players conquer the regions in their kingdoms and reinforce troops can sometimes tell you where they are located. For example, Great Kingdom and Clan Rhu castles will require the player owning them to reinforce troops forward once the regions in the kingdoms are conquered. On the other hand, a player could stack his castle if he controls any of the other six kingdoms without fortifying, even if he holds six regions in that kingdom (as an example, for Imperial Dynasty castle, a player would conquer ID 1, ID 2, ID 3, ID 5, and ID6, if he were playing no spoils - no need to bombard).

After playing a game with fog of war enabled, try reading through the log to see if there were clues you missed during the game. Doing this will pay dividends in future games. Once you get to expert level play on this map, you will see players try to disguise their location by fortifying even if they don't need to, changing their patterns, and otherwise try to throw their opponent off when reading the log.